“The enterprise in general and IT in particular should become early adopters of new wearable devices such as Google Glass and smart watches, and become familiar with the possible issues they present. BYOD policies, IT device management systems and employee education should be at the top of the list for enterprises as these new technologies begin to infiltrate the office. “

All true, but what are the odds? Let's break this down, starting with IT.

Christine Barry is Senior Chief Blogger and Social Media Manager at Barracuda. In this role, she helps bring Barracuda stories to life and facilitate communication between the public and Barracuda internal teams. Prior to joining Barracuda, Christine was a field engineer and project manager for K12 and SMB clients for over 15 years. She holds several technology credentials, a Bachelor of Arts, and a Master of Business Administration. She is a graduate of the University of Michigan.

People love their personal mobile devices, amirite? So much so that they would use their own mobile device for work rather than a corporate-owned workstation, even when it means that their own device will be monitored by the company. Don't believe me? Here are some interesting facts & figures:

70% of mobile professionals will conduct their work on personal smart devices by 2018 – Gartner

49% of U.S. IT managers “Strongly Agree that BYOD Improves Worker Productivity”. – readwrite and Intel

38 percent of companies expect to stop providing devices to workers by 2016.—Gartner

53% of information users use their own personal devices for work; install unsupported software; or use unsupported Internet based services like Dropbox, Skype, Twitter, or Facebook to help them do their jobs.—Forrester

Christine Barry is Senior Chief Blogger and Social Media Manager at Barracuda. In this role, she helps bring Barracuda stories to life and facilitate communication between the public and Barracuda internal teams. Prior to joining Barracuda, Christine was a field engineer and project manager for K12 and SMB clients for over 15 years. She holds several technology credentials, a Bachelor of Arts, and a Master of Business Administration. She is a graduate of the University of Michigan.

Added to this, an increasing number of organizations are implementing Bring-Your-Own-Device (BYOD) policies. Employees like using devices of their choice. They feel it provides familiarity, more flexibility and allows them to do their jobs better. It removes the need to learn another, possibly different device or application. In fact about 30% of those surveyed said they would still use personal devices even if their employer was able to monitor their device on the corporate network.

Herlev Gymnasium in Herlev, Denmark, with 800 students and 250 teaching staff, is pleased to be back to “business as usual”. Re-designing the school’s entire network in line with its BYOD policy has enabled the school to use digital learning techniques to further develop its education plans. Being able to research online in class is fast becoming essential to today’s teaching methods. To provide an optimal learning environment and give students constant wireless access for mobile devices, the school undertook an IT network project that would expand and strengthen its wireless network. At the time the IT infrastructure consisted of six local servers and external virtual servers that were accessed through unsecured VLAN and other large parts of unsecured network. The setup was diagnosed as far too complex for the onsite administration team consisting of two helpdesk workers. The whole network was in a need of a complete revamp and as the existing firewall didn’t scale to solve the school’s problems, a decision was taken to start there and work backwards. A firewall was an important consideration to ensure students were protected from malicious and unsuitable content online, whilst using their mobile devices.

Did you know that CeBIT is 28 years old? CeBIT is an IT conference billed as the biggest global event for the IT sector and exclusive hotbed for new business models and cutting-edge products.

CeBIT, or Centrum der Büro- und Informationstechnik, actually started in the 70's with the Hanover fair. The two shows went their separate ways in 1986, and the first solo CeBIT opened this week of that year.

Christine Barry is Senior Chief Blogger and Social Media Manager at Barracuda. In this role, she helps bring Barracuda stories to life and facilitate communication between the public and Barracuda internal teams. Prior to joining Barracuda, Christine was a field engineer and project manager for K12 and SMB clients for over 15 years. She holds several technology credentials, a Bachelor of Arts, and a Master of Business Administration. She is a graduate of the University of Michigan.

I sat down with Barracuda Research Scientist, Daniel Peck, for a little more insight on the subject. His thoughts were insightful, removing the hype and focusing on facts.

“I've read through the mobile malware study a couple of times, and I'm really not getting it. There are almost no real numbers, just loose percentages, and seems to be solutions in search of a problem in the mobile space. The way I read it, they're REALLY overloading some words and spending a lot of time talking about how often users visit a webpage that a business might block their employees from going to. They say very little about actual mobile malware – which isn't a surprise, as it’s such a small threat compared to everything else out there today. This kind of story does tend to get a lot of press due to the sexiness and people wondering if the thing in their pocket is sending away their digital lives to someone besides Google.”

Christine Barry is Senior Chief Blogger and Social Media Manager at Barracuda. In this role, she helps bring Barracuda stories to life and facilitate communication between the public and Barracuda internal teams. Prior to joining Barracuda, Christine was a field engineer and project manager for K12 and SMB clients for over 15 years. She holds several technology credentials, a Bachelor of Arts, and a Master of Business Administration. She is a graduate of the University of Michigan.

Many of us have an unhealthy relationship with our smartphones. They are with us all of the time, they hold our attention at inappropriate moments, and they are home to many of our darkest secrets.

A recent study of about 1,000 Americans revealed some interesting things about those “dark secrets” stored on our phone. In particular, the study surveyed what types of data was being stored on phones that the owners were afraid of other people finding. Results:

Banking information – 25%

Emails and text messages written – 24%

Emails and text messages received – 23%

Websites visited – 15%

Pornography – 10%

Naked photos of themselves – 8%

If you're thinking that banking information ranks the highest due to a concern of criminals seeing the data on the phone, you might be surprised. When asked to rank who they wanted to prevent from seeing their data, only 8% were most concerned about hackers / criminals. The other results were:

Christine Barry is Senior Chief Blogger and Social Media Manager at Barracuda. In this role, she helps bring Barracuda stories to life and facilitate communication between the public and Barracuda internal teams. Prior to joining Barracuda, Christine was a field engineer and project manager for K12 and SMB clients for over 15 years. She holds several technology credentials, a Bachelor of Arts, and a Master of Business Administration. She is a graduate of the University of Michigan.

Christine Barry is Senior Chief Blogger and Social Media Manager at Barracuda. In this role, she helps bring Barracuda stories to life and facilitate communication between the public and Barracuda internal teams. Prior to joining Barracuda, Christine was a field engineer and project manager for K12 and SMB clients for over 15 years. She holds several technology credentials, a Bachelor of Arts, and a Master of Business Administration. She is a graduate of the University of Michigan.

CNet is reporting that worldwide spending on wearable tech is going to hit $1.4 billion this year, and $19 billion by 2019. This is largely due to Google Glass, Galaxy Gear, and the anticipated launch of an Apple smartwatch. You know what that means? This stuff is going to show up in your boardrooms, classrooms, warrooms, and so on.

I came close to buying a Galaxy Gear a few weeks ago, when I was drooling over the gorgeous new Galaxy Note 3. It would have been my first foray into wearable tech and I was giddy at the thought of it, until I visualized a day in the life of Christine and her Gear:

Christine Barry is Senior Chief Blogger and Social Media Manager at Barracuda. In this role, she helps bring Barracuda stories to life and facilitate communication between the public and Barracuda internal teams. Prior to joining Barracuda, Christine was a field engineer and project manager for K12 and SMB clients for over 15 years. She holds several technology credentials, a Bachelor of Arts, and a Master of Business Administration. She is a graduate of the University of Michigan.